Inside out Porphyridium cruentum: Beyond the Conventional Biorefinery Concept

Here, an unprecedented biorefinery approach has been designed to recover high-added value bioproducts starting from the culture of Porphyridium cruentum. This unicellular marine red alga can secrete and accumulate high-value compounds that can find applications in a wide variety of industrial fields. 300 ± 67 mg/L of exopolysaccharides were obtained from cell culture medium; phycoerythrin was efficiently extracted (40% of total extract) and isolated by a single chromatography, with a purity grade that allowed the crystal structure determination at 1.85 Å; a 2-fold increase in β-carotene yield was obtained from the residual biomass; the final residual biomass was found to be enriched in saturated fatty acids. Thus, for the first time, a complete exploitation of P. cruentum culture was set-up